Legends of the Lost

In the Bat Cave Lay Bags Heavy with Golden Nuggets

According to the story I was following, the vampire bat gold was found in 1875 when an old Papago discovered a mine shaft while tracking a deer across a ridge northeast of Baboquivari Peak. The man had wounded the deer several hours earlier and had been trailing it. Then, in late afternoon, nearly sunset, he stopped to rest on an outcrop of fractured boulders lodged in the crusty hillside. The bats seemed to come from nowhere, dozens of them, shooting up from the earth like skeet and then darting about before he lost their motions in the waning light. The Papago was curious, and he soon found the tunnel from which the bats emerged. It appeared to be man-made. He fashioned a torch from a branch of of dry oak and cleared away the entrance. Inside, the air was still and laden with the strong ammoniacal smell of guano. There were metates and manos scattered about, candlesticks, and a few old mining tools. The tunnel was quite long. He found several stopes and piles of broken ore, and then he found the gold, itself: several bags of decomposing buckskin, heavy with nuggets and small bars. A few of the nuggets had spilled onto the dirt floor where the bags had torn. More than a century later, I found myself bushwhacking up what I hoped was the same northeasterly ridge on which that Papago had lost his deer but found his fortune. Despite it being a beautiful spring day, I'd been unable to convince any of my friends to come along for the search, so I was accompanied only by Boone, my neighbor's golden retriever. Boone didn't appear to have any skills in the gold-retrieving department, but he was endlessly enthusiastic about spending the day running up and down ridges and canyons. In short, he was the perfect partner for a search that involved only one relatively worthless clue: The mine shaft was in a northeasterly running ridge. The original clue (the bats) was a clue no longer for reasons I will get to. For the moment, we had only the ridge.

True, there only was one ridge that ran in a northeasterly direction from Baboquivari a fact that was pointed out to me by a map-loving friend but the ridge was big, and rough going. I ducked under juniper branches, circumnavigated prickly pears, stepped on bear grass, and dodged the sotol and shindaggers.

Eventually we made it to the crest, which allowed a fine view of the mountains and Altar Valley off to the east, but no hint of where a mine shaft might be. I looked at Boone, who was panting but showed no signs of disappointment or dismay. We took a water break then headed back down into Sabino Canyon to the Elkhorn Ranch, where our quest had begun.

The Elkhorn now is strictly a guest ranch, but the owner, Bob Miller, is a real rancher and had lived in the area many of his 60 some years. I asked him about gold, and he chuckled.

"Aw," he said, "there's all kinds of little ol' diggin's around here."

"Really?" I said. "Anyone getting rich?" He chuckled again and shook his head in a way that made me wonder how many prospectors he'd run into over the years. I pulled out my topo map and spread it on a wooden bench. Miller ran one sun-beaten hand over the contour lines while pulling a tin of snuff from his flannel shirt with the other.

He pointed out the Allison Mine, the Gold Bullion, the Jupiter, the Papago Chief, and some other prospects. A few had been more than "little ol' diggin's." The Allison Mine, for example, which lies on the west side of the range (on the Papago reservation), reportedly produced more than 2,000 ounces of gold and 44,000 ounces of silver between 1926 and 1928. By 1972 total production in the Baboquivari district was some 14,000 ounces of gold and 173,000 ounces of silver. That is a fair bit of precious metal, but not so much that you're likely to trip over a nugget while crossing an arroyo.

west side of the range (on the Papago reservation), reportedly produced more than 2,000 ounces of gold and 44,000 ounces of silver between 1926 and 1928. By 1972 total production in the Baboquivari district was some 14,000 ounces of gold and 173,000 ounces of silver. That is a fair bit of precious metal, but not so much that you're likely to trip over a nugget while crossing an arroyo.

There has never been extensive placer mining in the Baboquivari area, but at the time the Papago found his lode there was a fair bit going on in nearby Arivaca, where he traded his bullion for food and other supplies. As the story goes, nobody in Arivaca was too surprised to see a man continually showing up with gold because there was plenty of it around. It's estimated that by 1850, prospectors extracted $150,000 worth from the gravels along Arivaca Creek and other watercourses. Ignacio Pesqueria, a Mexican revolutionary, found enough gold to fund a rebellion, which landed him the governor's seat of Sonora in 1865.

The placers eventually played out, yet the old Indian kept showing up with gold. People grew suspicious. They followed him and pestered him for the location of his hidden stash. When the Papago finally relented, he told his story to a friend, the merchant who'd weighed his gold for so many years. He explained how the bats had led him to it, and how he still used them to find the entrance.

By the time the merchant loaded up his mule a few days later, however, there were no more bats to lead the way. The Indian, who'd felt a strong loyalty to his friend, was possessed of an even stronger fear that the Papago gods would be angered by a white man digging into sacred land. So the old man had buried the cave entrance, with the bats inside, shortly after revealing his secret.

By midafternoon, Boone and I had driven the dusty ranch road back out to the highway, cut south a dozen miles, and made our way back into Thomas Canyon, which leads directly to the base of Baboquivari Peak. The owners of Riggs Ranch told us of a guano-stained shaft a quarter mile down the canyon from their house, but it had been filled up with debris. I decided to hike up to Lion's Ledge on Babo, where we could camp for the night. I'd seen a couple of holes in an intrusive razor-backed dike above the canyon, and from the ledge I could scan the ridgelines for bats at sunset, just in case.

Again the going was rough but worth it. Up through the thick forest of Thomas Canyon, we hiked several miles and gained 2,000 vertical feet. Finally we broke into the open where the mountain turned to pure rock. The cliff formed a great amphitheater, curving around and over us. Its long shadow slid down the canyon. We drank from a spring, and I gazed through the binoculars at the ridges that fell away from the crest of the range. Nothing.

No surprise there, but no disappointment. I looked over at Boone, who was now dozing on my sleeping bag, and I knew the day had been a success.